Reissues

With a sonic portfolio that boasts commissions for the Xenon classic pinball machine, the sounds for the Meco Star Wars theme, the Atari TV commercials and the electronic sound effects in the original Stepford Wives film (amongst many others) the mutant electronic music CV of Suzanne Ciani is proof that in a 1970s commercial world of boys toys, monopolized by a male-dominated media industry, a woman's touch was the essential secret ingredient to successful sonic seduction. A classically-trained …

Exact reproduction LP of a Swedish release from 1970. A bit of confusion surrounds this release: The album has been credited to Träd, Gräs och Stenar, but they aren't featured on it. Bo Anders Persson did, in fact, in collaboration with Solvieg Bark, compile, edit and release this album. Bo Anders Persson, was a member of the legendary Swedish bands Harvester, International Harvester, Pärson Sound, and Träd, Gräs Och Stenar. Solveig Bark was one of a few young composers that, through the UNM (Yo…

**Limited edition of 300 including two inserts** The first release on Ricerca Sonora is a new album by the important American Avant-Garde figure Philip Corner. A contemporary of John Cage, Corner studied composition with Henry Cowell and Otto Luening and musical analysis with Oliver Messaiaen. He was a founding member of the Fluxus movement, founder (with James Tenney and Malcolm Goldstein) of the Tone Roads Ensemble, the resident musician and composer for the Judson dance theatre, and co-founde…

Two Electronic Sonorities LP includes 2 seminal electronic music radical realizations by Charlemagne Palestine: "Crwon Chan 1&2 + 3&4' subtitled "Gus Salomon Dance Concert '70' a continuous, ever-moving, ever-changing sound-form produced with simple sine tone generators, moog and arps, intended to create a texture for the Gus Solomons (a choreographer at New York University and Merce Cunningham associate) new dance work. Second side is sublime late 60's electronic work inspired by Michelangelo A…

Issued for an art event recently presented at the Galleria Milano in the first week of April 2012, the recordings on this LP edition represent a very specific and intimate moment in the creative sound production of Davide Mosconi with NADMA associates Inez Klok and Gustavo Bonora.For Davide Mosconi and for all the artists and musicians involved in the groups he founded (the legendary NADMA, Organic Archestra, Il Quartetto, Alea), improvising sessions were a daily practice that founded their very…

Derek Bailey, electric guitar. Pat Thomas, keyboards. Steve Noble, turntables. Recorded at Moat Studios, London, August 1997.

2CD version. Daphne Oram, founder of the BBC Radiophonic Workshop, died in 2003 leaving a colossal archive of reel-to-reel tapes and documents behind. This important collection of material eventually made its way to Goldsmiths College, London, who have been administering it on behalf of the Daphne Oram Trust for the last few years. The collection holds over 400 tapes made by Oram during her lifetime, and 211 of those have been archived and catalogued by the college so far. The Daphne Oram …

The grainy, haunted beauty of Jandek's early work went through many phases, never quite as varied and multi-faceted as the material on his 4th album, Chair Beside A Window released in 1982. The relatively wide range of Chair Beside A Window gives insight into the influences on the seemingly impenetrable Jandek sound. Hearing the blown-out harmonica bluster of 'You Think You Know How To Score' it's hard not to imagine it as the Jandek equivalent of a Dylan phase, however insanely translated.…

Collection gathers pre-Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice material from James Jackson Toth's Golden Calves project. Originally released in 1996; limited to 1000 copies. "It was really all about The Godz, Jandek, The Shadow Ring, Strapping Fieldhands, Swell Maps and Tower Recordings. Beyond these, I had only heard the 'classic' and most available free jazz, krautrock and noise albums. I was a long way from, say, the second Comus album or Charles Gayle. But this music changed my life. It was a re…

REISSUE on 180gm vinyl! Originally released in 1969, COSTA's 2nd album is one of the finest releases to come out of Brazil's Tropicalia movement. Feat. songwriting & vocal help from 2 of the original Tropicalismos, CAETANO VELOSO & GILBERTO GIL, she flows effortlessly between shredding psychedelia & smooth bossa nova. An essential record for anyone that appreciates the far reaches of Brazilian popular music. Incl. the classic trks "Baby" * "Não Identificado." Such a pleasant surpise to se…

special box in 26 copies, made in high quality leather various African objects/artworks from various African tribes, stunning booklet with many rare photos (30) of the Tour (mostly color and b&w) cola nuts (to break the colanut with somebody african saying, which means to make friendship) an extra one-sided LP (I side) on gold and gold/green wax, - ALL recordings available here for the 1st time! "One of music's most amazing powers is its ability to tell a story. In the case of The African Tapes,…

Originally released on CD in 2004, this new edition of 4/23/03 is now pressed on two slabs of American vinyl pressed by United Record Pressing and housed within a handsome two color silkscreened gatefold jacket bearing artwork replicating that from the album's CD incarnation. The album, from an edition of approximately 700 copies, presents the entire contents of the original CD version plus a 'new' additional track from the original record¬ing sessions. All copies of the 4/23/03 2xLP are …

Few copies available, sold out at source - Homage To The Pointed Waveforms is the final release in a series dedicated to specific sound waves. Following Square (2008) and Sine (2009), ...Pointed Waveforms explores composition with triangle and sawtooth waves through studies of a dense modular system. Variations were performed live in Barcelona, Brussels and Madrid during spring 2011, but this LP is the next step. Side A contains a version of the piece that was conceived for the shows, whi…

Born in 1929, Boguslaw Schaeffer crossed the Polish Radio Experimental Studio from 1966 to 1976. Many of his electronic music compositions are obtained mixing concrete sounds. For sixty years Schaeffer has shown a pioneering approach to the creative process, exploring untouched, untapped and even unimagined areas of music. His artistry as playwright, composer, musicologist, graphic artist and his extensive interest in other arts disciplines, makes it wholly unsurprising that his visual work mixe…

The KEW stands for a group of three composers: Krzysztof, Elzbieta and Wojciech, founded in 1973 when they were all students at the Fryderyk Chopin Higher State School of Music in Warsaw. They were a group of friends who enjoyed spending time in good (i.e. each other's) company and collectively coming up with new compositions. They weren't average students. Elzbieta Sikora had already been on probation (1968-1970) in Groupe de Recherches Musicales in Paris under the guidance of Pierre Sch…

There are not too many names that get us more excited here at AZ HQ than Conrad Schnitzler's. Since the mid-1960s, Schnitzler has been one of the undisputed masters of electronic experimentation, and his name is synonymous with Krautrock's innovation and defiant musical vision. A prolific solo artist, he also founded Kluster (later Cluster) with Dieter Moebius and Hans-Joachim Roedelius, was an early collaborator with seminal Kosmische acts Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze, and, in 1967, founde…

John Duncan was born in Wichita, Kansas and arrived in Los Angeles in the mid-1970s, where he became closely associated with the Los Angeles Free Music Society, working with Tom Recchion, Fredrik Nilsen, and Joe Potts. His early practice combined radical performance work, live radio experimentation over KPFK's Close Radio with Paul McCarthy, and an obsessive engagement with shortwave radio that would define his sound for decades. He left the United States for Tokyo in 1982, continued work with p…

Finally restocked! After five years of intense, passionate and sometimes painful work Die Schachtel (in collaboration with RAI) is proud to announce the release of the long-awaited massive Book (Edited by Angela Ida de Benedictis and Maddalena Novati) with 6CDs boxed edition dedicated to some of the most compelling Italian radio works which took part in the prestigious Prix Italia, a world-famous contest established by the RAI (the National Italian broadcasting company) in the early Sixties and …

'Previously unreleased material by the legendary Rick Potts of the Los Angeles Free Music Society (LAFMS), to commemorate his solo tour of Japan. Raw, lo-fi avant-garde experiments with field recording, improvisation and tape music, recorded in the late seventies when Rick was in his early twenties. Featuring contributions by Le Forte Four and Doodooettes on one track, and two recently recorded unreleased tracks. " In 1977 I wanted to make an animated film filled with the strange creatures…

This CD is a remastered reissue of a very limited CD-R released by Omega Point in 1999. This is the sixth volume in Edition Omega Point's Experimental Music Of Japan series. Atsuhiro Ito was born in 1965. He launched his career as a visual artist in the late '80s, and in '98 began presenting sound performances at art exhibitions. Ito made use of fluorescent lighting (which is also an element of his art installations) in the creation of an original musical device called the Optron. In addition, I…

Achim Mohné experiments with the space and time intervals of media, photography, video, digital image production, as well as with sound. His experiments bring to light the surprising uses that lie dormant in today's technology. For The Tapeworm, Achim focused on audiotape itself: as material, as body, as signifier and as sculpture. Some notes on the sources and methods used to create And It Could Have Been Dead... follow: A1., "How To Use This Cassette" is mixed from a 1982 Blaupunkt instruction…

A double set of soundtrack material for the 70s films of Eriprando Visconti (1908 -1980), the nephew of the great Luchino Visconti, with the CD release of the scores from his most famous movies: "La orca" and its sequel "Oedipus orca", and "Una spirale di nebbia". "The first CD is by the computer-music pioneer and wizard James Dashow: Besides the selected tracks for the original LP album (Cinevox MDF 33/107 - 33:15), about 21 minutes of extra music have now been included. This OST keeps a consta…

Philip Corner (b. 1933) is an American composer, musician and visual artist. His teachers include Henry Cowell and Olivier Messiaen. While on military duty in Korea in 1960-1961, he studied calligraphy with Ki-sung Kim and many of his works have calligraphic scores. A founding member of Fluxus, Corner has performed with George Maciunas, Dick Higgins, Yoko Ono and Nam June Paik. From 1967 to 1970 he taught the course in Experimental Composition at the New School for Social Research, which John Ca…

When psycho-spatial composer Nelson Gastaldi passed away in 2009 at the age of 77, he left behind a unique musical legacy that is only now beginning to be unveiled. A self-described “musical nihilist with noble and mystic origins” (as well as an accomplished visual artist), Gastaldi supported himself and his family with a job at an electric company in Buenos Aires, Argentina, while creating an astonishing body of work that went virtually unheard during his lifetime. Synthesizing his wide-ranging…

Mind-stretching analog synth wizardry from the legendary Matsuo Ohno, sound designer for Astro Boy and many other Japanese films and TV programs. His first non-soundtrack release, from 1978, is a massive, undulating galaxy re-released here on CD with a bonus mini-CD reissue of a rare 1970 flexi-disc Play On Animals, rated as one of 2011's top releases by Byron Coley of The Wire. This reissue of his stellar 1978 LP I Saw The Outer Limits presents him at the peak of his powers, combining his maste…

Double LP edition: Lengths of stretched distortion rattle the grey matter, unnervingly slow and severe. With Sunn O)))’s second album, ØØ Void, the sonic misery nurtured to functionality by Greg Anderson and Stephen O’Malley stays simple and repetitive, a tabula rasa having yet to realize the full scope of its potential. With this album, Sunn O))) worked as a three-piece, collaborator Stuart Dalquist coming up with its opener, “Richard,” which is a solid fourteen and a half minutes of be…

The voice as instrument, the temple bell as orchestra, the piano as detonator. Vol. 3 of Earle Brown's Contemporary Sound Series traces three radical propositions about sound and its sources - each originating from a different continent, each redefining what was possible within its medium. The first disc belongs to Cathy Berberian. Originally issued on Time Records in 1962, it captures the American mezzo-soprano - then based in Milan and married to Luciano Berio - at the height of her extraordin…

"Volume 8 in the ongoing FRKWYS series on RVNG Intl. is a double album-length collaboration between Blues Control and Laraaji. Following the 'fodder first' tradition of previous FRKWYS installments, Vol. 8 was birthed over e-mail dialogue between RVNG and Russ Waterhouse and Lea Cho of Blues Control. Blues Control's evolved output gracefully arcs with influence and innovation that gleams electronic, New Age, and hard rock terrains. Laraaji's name came up early in that conversation and felt intri…

Few figures of the American avant-garde wore as many hats as Earle Brown. Composer, graphic notation pioneer, member of the New York School alongside John Cage, Morton Feldman, and Christian Wolff - but also, and crucially, a record producer whose ear shaped one of the most important document series in 20th century music. Between 1960 and 1973, working first for Time Records and then Mainstream Records, Brown curated the Contemporary Sound Series - 18 LPs presenting works by 49 composers from 16…

"Wergo's reissues of the legendary Earle Brown Contemporary Sound Series have been a big hit with fans of contemporary music around the world. Each set is a treasure-trove of works by a wide range of composers, performed by some of the finest musicians of the time. The three CDs of volume four feature string quartets by Boulez, Scelsi and Earle Brown, works for chamber orchestra by Xenakis, Aldo Clementi, Bo Nilsson, Wlodzimierz Kotonski and Yuji Takahashi and works by Milko Kelemen, Niccolo Cas…

Outstanding reissue, one of the best Merzbow albums ever made, originally released in 1983 on cassette by the Milanese label Adn, Kibbutz is a mélange of sounds made by Masami Akita aka Merzbow on drums, guitar and effects supported, in those years, by Kiyoshi Mizutani at the keyboards and recorded at Kitijoji Music Studio in Tokyo. In this first period, the sounds produced by the duo were amplified up to the distortion producing long sonic-anti psychedelic  jam session. The three tracks on Kibb…

Michael Chapman, one of the finest acoustic guitar innovators borne of the late '70s UK folk scene, was in Philadelphia early 2010, paying tribute to his good friend, the late Jack Rose, a mighty six-string alchemist in his own right, and a youngster wholly inspired by Chapman's critical recordings. While sharing in the good light of friendship backstage, we asked Michael if he'd ever recorded an LP of purely improvised guitar music. It seemed feasible, as the current state of acou…

restocked: The music comprising John Bischoff’s new CD ‘Audio Combine’, just released on New World Records, is beautiful, fascinating, thoroughly enjoyable. Philip Perkins’s engineering and production values are superb.The five tracks on the disc are diverse, representing Bischoff compositions from 2004 to mid-2011. The third track ‘Local Color’ evokes traditional chinese zhong bells, but also especially calls into question the ‘who’ of music performance [in asmuch as some of the bells are compu…

Seminal recording (originally released in 1964) by the two men most responsible for opening the West to Indian music. Master of the sitar, Ravi Shankar (age 91) is, of course, famous for his legendary influence on the Beatles, but this recording was made for the American jazz label Prestige prior to their meeting. Perhaps lesser intertwined with the pop music world, Ali Akbar-Khan is nonetheless one of India’s greatest musicians, and the world’s best sarod player. Shankar and Khan play to…

The 5th volume from NYC's The Kitchen performance center focuses on piano music from performers Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Charlemagne Palestine, Anthony Davis, Harold Budd, and Dennis Russel Davies. Pianos in The Kitchen brings together select concert recordings of solo piano works performed at The Kitchen from 1976 through 1983, including works from the 1976 Bösendorfer Festival and the 1983 series of benefit concerts that supported the purchase of a new Steinway Baby Grand piano for the…

Cold Phoenix were an italian dark wave / post punk group from Bologna, formed in 1985 by Vittorio Barion (bass), Alessandro Paltretti (guitar,vocals), Alessandro Ruggeri (drums) and Alberto Verri (keyboards). Their story is simply the story of 4 young guys, with a great passion for our beloved dark tunes, in fact all the tracks were composed ad the age of 19..just two years later, after the release of their only 12'' EP 'Your Eyes Are My Eyes', few live acts and even video appareances on Rai Tel…

A box collecting seven years of work, from 2000 to 2007: psychedelic drone, experimental electroacoustics, minimal music and deep listening. Monosov belongs to the Frogpeak collective and has worked with Charles Curtis and Duane Pitre.

Xex were an all-synthesizer band from South River, New Jersey who recorded their debut album group:xex in 1980. Formed when a trio of high school misfits with funny names (Waw Pierogi, Thumbalina Gugielmo and Alex Zander) teamed up with some friends from Rutgers CollegePerformed entirely on then-state-of-the-art Arps, synths and electronic drums – no guitars anywhere – group: xex aims for the future, but comes across now like a time capsule from the deepest, darkest Reagan years. Each song burro…

Mannequin continues its archeological mission bringing back to the modern format of the CD the cult italian new wave band Degada Saf, with their LP No Inzro from 1984. Degada Saf were a transgressive-dada-ist musical combo coming from Veneto. The project has seen the light back in the 80s thanks to the reunion of two charismatic experimental sound makers, Fausto Crocetta and Luigi Campalani (with additional sounds provided by Fabio Basso, Gianni Baggio and Stefano Dal Col). The music of …

“Sleeping City” is the highly anticipated and Anna’s second release in co-operation with the Mannequin label from Rome, Italy.  Intelligence Dept. were Davide Carlotti (synthesisers, sax, backing vocals), Susanna Zaghi (vocals, lyrics), Stefano Panzera (bass) and Gian Paolo Di Federico (synthesisers, drum machine programming) from Ferrara, Italy. They only ever officially released three, yet totally amazing tracks on the “A White Chance” LP compilation in 1984 (White Studio Recording, WS 001; Wh…